All Rise...

The Charge

"I can't seem to keep my hands off of you."—Heather

The Case

Bikini Bandits: Briefs, Shorts, and Panties is like a Troma film
without the nudity, with the slickness and fast cutting of an MTV featurette.
You could say that Briefs, Shorts, and Panties appeals to the lowest
common denominator…except no denominator is low enough, and it certainly
isn't common. The basic premise of this series goes like this:

1) Sexy, gun-toting women in small bikinis find a G-Mart. They double-park,
get out of the car in slow motion, and walk toward it. 2) A black man
sipping malt liquor from a brown paper bag sees them and mutters "Awww,
sh*t!" 3) The Bikini Bandits walk into the store, yell "Freeze,
mutha fukkas!" and steal a bunch of vaguely humorous-looking products (if
we had time to see them). 4) A "trying our damnest to be
offensive" subplot ensues, be it a retard with a huge schlong doing porn,
gay clowns having anal sex, a black guy eating chicken and drooling over
automatic weapons, a plot to rape the virgin Mary, or what have you. 5)
The girls drag a mildly retarded guy with bad teeth along with them and kill
him. 6) The cops/Satan/the mob arrives on the scene and swears to get the
bikini bandits one of these days.

Judge Bill Gibron has more than adequately covered the content of this DVD
in his review of The Bikini
Bandits Experience, which overlaps almost completely with this DVD. I agree
with Bill about the heavily self-promotional flavor, the repetitiveness, and
most of all that Bikini Bandits "just doesn't know how to administer
its anarchy very well." The blitzkrieg pacing doesn't allow any vibe to
bloom. Just when you're about to get horny, the scene cuts to a guy wearing fake
redneck teeth. Just when you're about to get offended, the scene breezes over to
a sight gag. If they stayed on target for more than three seconds at a time, it
might build up something resembling emotional attachment. Instead, just lie back
like a couch sponge and let the kaleidoscope of imagery wash over you.

Judge Gibron is also right that the whole thing is funny, energetic, and
somewhat sexy. The lesbian undertone in "Bikini Bandits and the Time
Machine" is the peak of eroticism, milking the lipstick lesbian cliché
for all it's worth. "Bikini Bandits and the Golden Rod" is the only
short to actually acknowledge the Bandits' breasts, when Heather hefts her
divine assets for a moment. These hints reveal what Bikini Bandits could
have been. The energy and humor are very dumb—but they definitely exist,
capitalizing on a punk vibe as much as possible. The high points are seeing
Corey Feldman poke fun at his teenage self, or Tool frontman Maynard posing as
the Devil. Maynard's involvement ups the visibility of the soundtrack, resulting
in an authentic MTV experience. Let's face it, MTV is both successful and
popular, Tool rocks, and bikini-clad, gun-toting babes have a certain
cachet.

Bikini Bandits always stays in check, never showing nudity or actual
violence, never breaking the curtain of playfulness. In fact, I've seen Troma's
version of Bikini Bandits, Fortress Of Amerikkka, a wreck of a
film that torpedoes itself by showing nudity and violence in unappealing ways.
By comparison, Bikini Bandits retains a coyness and self-respect that
make it viable. In fact, though the whole thing is bizarre and white-trashy, it
was engaging enough that I was entertained the whole way through.

This is all beside the real point. It is hard to pin down this specific DVD
collection of Bikini Bandits shorts (is it the compilation from the
G-Mart site, or the one on the Amazon site, or something else?), but in any case
you'll be paying about $15 for a compilation of material that exists for free on
the Internet. Below is the list of Bikini Bandits clips featured on this
DVD, and you'll find all of them at AtomFilms:

As if that weren't enough, the DVD lacks any sort of menu or clear
organizational structure. You put it in, it plays and repeats ad infinitum.
(Incidentally, the video is relatively polished, and the sound quality is clean
enough to support the repetitive alternative rock track.) Yes, having Bikini
Bandits right there at your fingertips is a nice perk, but how hard is it to
jump online and get your Bikini Bandits fix?

For what it is, Bikini Bandits is reasonably successful. The mix of
live action, Flash animation, music video, and faux ads is fresh and funny. If
Steve Grasse had backed off of the frantic intercutting of erotic stuff with
stupid stuff, we might be talking about the new wave of exploitation. As it
stands, Grasse updates an old formula for the new scene, along with modern
annoyances. Nonetheless, despite your best intentions, Briefs, Shorts, and
Panties worms its way into your brain and infects you with visions of hot
women.

Give us your feedback!

Did we give Bikini Bandits: Briefs, Shorts, And Panties a fair trial? yes / no

What's "fair"? Whether positive or negative, our reviews should be unbiased, informative, and critique the material on its own merits.